God now flooding Lismore with blessings of unity
In the wake of some of the worst floods in its history, God moved amongst his people in the northern NSW city of Lismore to unite for his glory. Lismore Corps Officer Captain Phil Sutcliffe shared this story with the world leaders of The Salvation Army, General Lyndon and Commissioner Buckingham, at an Officers Council gathering in Sydney last week.
BY CAPTAIN PHIL SUTCLIFFE
On 28 February 2022, the city of Lismore was hit with devastating flooding. The event has now become the most expensive disaster in Australia’s history.
But this story starts in November 2021 when I was asked to preach at our combined churches service. From the time that I was asked, I felt that God was telling me to preach on unity amongst our churches – putting aside our denominational differences and working together to spread the name of Jesus in our community.
After that service, a local pastor from a Pentecostal church said they were going to cancel their service in a fortnight and come and join our service. We had a beautiful time together. So, that started a regular period of combined church meetings every few months. It was the start of a beautiful collaboration.
In the days after the major flood, the churches were present in our community – in unity – providing food, water and helping people to clean up.
Four weeks after the first major flood, a second major flood hit our town. Members of other churches, particularly ‘Generation Go’ church, became our extra hands, volunteering [with our Salvation Army Emergency Services team] at our evacuation centre. As the weeks and months progressed after the floods, our collaboration with other churches continued to strengthen.
Towards the end of the year, when we were looking towards how we were going to assist our community at Christmas, we quickly realised that our church space was not going to be big enough to hold all the supplies that we would need. Speaking with Pastor Tony from ‘Generation Go’, we found out that they were up to a stage in their rebuild where we would be able to use their hall to deliver our Christmas Cheer. That year, we were able to help around 450 families, which was over 600 children with toys and hampers. A huge increase on the 150 hampers we had done the year before.
In early 2023, Crossroads Church and Generation Go, both ACC churches that had been meeting together since the floods, decided to formally merge and become The Collective. Over this time, our partnership with these churches continued to grow, so much so that we were regularly doing combined Sunday meetings together. And during those times we were able to fundraise for overseas development work and other things in our community. The connection when our churches came together was incredible.
In July 2023, I was woken up by God one night saying, “You need to talk to these pastors about coexisting and sharing The Salvation Army building in ministry.” I wrestled with this idea. I spoke to my wife, Donna, and then we invited the pastors from The Collective over one night for supper. We suggested the idea and it was warmly received. We then began the process of working out how all this would work.
Once we decided, we started to see God’s blessings poured out in our community. We ended up with a full-time Doorways Recovery worker, a perfect addition to our team post the disaster of the floods. He then brought his family to church – a Sudanese family with four kids and one on the way. And he then invited the rest of his family and the rest of the Sudanese community.
In September, we went on a holiday, and at that stage we just had our two kids in our church. When we returned from furlough, we had 16 kids under the age of 15 in our church!
Not only that, we have had the incredible blessing of God calling back people who had walked away from the church and were now starting to come back.
So, from Christmas Eve 2023, The Salvation Army Lismore Corps has been co-existing together with The Collective. We do all our midweek ministry together, everything we do from Monday to Saturday we combine in serving and sharing the love of Jesus with our community.
And then, on Sunday morning, they do their service, we cross over with combined morning tea, and then we do our service. We still do combined services every two months. Easter was a fantastic time, with over 190 people gathered together – two churches, praising the name of Jesus. It’s been amazing.
We are working together throughout the week, we are sharing our resources, sharing our people. We are able to reach further into the community. We are seeing people transformed by the love of Jesus every single day because we focus on keeping Jesus front and centre of all that we do.
What a great example of living out the Australia Territory’s rally cry: Jesus-centred, Spirit-led and hope revealed!
Transcribed by Lauren Martin
